The U.N.’s labor agency says worldwide, an average of more than one in six young workers have stopped working during the pandemic, and no region has been hit harder than the Americas.
At a briefing Wednesday in Geneva, the International Labor Organization (ILO), issued the fourth edition of its report on the impact of the pandemic on jobs.
ILO General Director Guy Ryder said the world lost the equivalent of 305 million fulltime jobs due to the COVID-19 crisis. He said greatest job losses are being experienced in the Americas, which according to the World Health Organization (WHO), also currently is the epicenter of the pandemic.
Ryder said the report shows young workers, especially women, between the ages of 15 and 28 are being hit the hardest by the pandemic. He warned if governments do not take “significant and immediate action to improve their situation” — such as education or job training — the economic impact of the pandemic will be “with us for decades.”
The ILO said policymakers can take steps to ease the fallout, such as by providing guarantees that protect employment, and by rolling out COVID-19 testing and tracing measures. The group says all of these measures can help improve workplace safety and get people back to work faster and more safely.
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The report is based on a survey the ILO and its partners conducted on youth employment.
The report also discusses the measures to create a safe environment for workers returning to the workplace. The ILO says rigorous testing and tracing (TT) of COVID-19 infections “is strongly related to lower labor market disruption” and “substantially smaller social disruptions than confinement and lockdown measures.”
The report says countries with strong testing and tracing had up to 50 percent less reduction in working hours.